Divot, savage, is the 20th anniversary of bush versus gore. We ask you, since you have been , toring the Supreme Court look back at the 2000 election. What we were going through that as compared to what is happening now and also some of the lessons learned. Lets start with the court itself. Themmembers, and seven of appointed by republican president s but how did they align ideologically . It was pretty much a 54 pretty much a 54 vote. There were several moderate republicans. Souter, ruthd ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer were the four on the left. , but alsoconservative an interesting era. Justice kennedy and justice were conservatives and you could not predict them in cases. You say more about chief Justice William rehnquist and his approach to leaving the court . He had been on the court for a lot of years. He had strong, clear views. I got lunch with them every year. I found him very interesting but he could talk about all sorts of subjects. Want to talk about sports or politics, the weather, whatever, he was a person who liked to get out and talk to people. He also was a very good leader. The justices really appreciated it. He knew people have different views, but he was a very good leader. Really was an ideological leader. He had strong views about the separate states having authority. Years, he lot of leaned the court in this direction. Among the republican appointees, in addition to antonin scalia, were there other ideologies were someone was textual list or originalist . No. Justice kennedy and Justice Oconnor were moderate, but originalist some was pretty much the province of Justice Scalia and justice thomas. Connor justices weonnor and kennedy thought had 200 years and questions like equal protection of the law were and they didn 1787 not have a lot of regard for train to figure out what the understanding was about this questions. So, it was not or dominated by notions of original is him as it is now. We will come back to these questions as infants play out. The morning after the election in 2000, neither candidate, al gore, nor george w. Bush had achieved the hundred 90 Electoral College 290 Electoral College votes. Vice president al gore, 18th dates, d. C. , 260 and the focus turned to florida, which at the time had 25, now 29, Electoral College votes. We assume they establish legal strategies long before election day . No. No, i think both sides were sort because ibling think back about it, then it was obvious, i suppose, even then that the single biggest fact was george bush was ahead by a couple hundred votes on Election Night. After all the ballots had gone through the counting machines. , leaving the team for bush, said governor bush led the vote. Its all over. He won. Ill was his team was left with, what do we do . Were only 500 votes behind. There were nearly 6 million ballots cast. We need to go back and he if there were votes the margin was so close. I dont think they had any great legal strategy prior to election had a clearh sides strategy. The republican strategy was, its all over. Governor bush one. They wanted to go back, do some recounts, this is very close. Way, where there are comparisons to today, today, both campaigns of have legal strategies in place for quite a while. Is that your understanding as well . Yes. The new there was they knew that there was a possibility litigation. And sides are on notice they are preparing themselves. Theof this turns on technicality of state laws. Then your strategy becomes where is your candidate. Is he ahead or behind. Two other notes about the 2000 legal team. The bush team was led by former secretary of state james baker and al gore selected former secretary of state warren christopher. How important was it for the Public Confidence in the process to have two people of the stature as head of the legal teams . Both of them were impressive people, wise men of the time, very different approach, very different strategy. Was standing before the cameras, being very public in saying, as i said, governor bush has one. Its time for us this to end has won. Its time for this and. More christopher was much more reserved. And he was very much a more reserved figure. It affected the strategy. This is much more aggressive. Our candidate one. Its time for this to end. I think it had some effect. Three names of note, of pop up. Carry roberts, kavanaugh, and bear it. Are they anything other than a footnote to the story . They are a footnote for the reason that you know and i know, but i dont think they had it was the kind of case where the army of Young Lawyers, they basically said rush to florida and get involved. We all know a lot of reporters and journalists said there were a lot of Young Lawyers who immediately went to help out, but i dont think john roberts or certainly Amy Coney Barrett or Brett Kavanaugh had in or miss roles. In or miss roles. They were there to help out or chicken. So the days between the first appeal and the Supreme Court were full of legal argument. Arguments. The first involvement of the Supreme Court happened november 22. If you had to summarize, the legal wrangling, is there anything that stands out . I will tell you what i remember. It was very much count all the votes. They had a philosophy and an approach to the election law. It is important to get the race right. Count all the ballots. Very open to the argument of saying, this is a very close election. We need to make sure all the votes are counted. They were very open to the argument that gores team was making which is this is a razor thin margin. We should look at recounting vote. On main legal dispute early was it was a provision and the florida law that said if there is an error in the vote tabulation that could have determined the vote outcome that could be grounds for doing recounts. Phrase error in the vote tabulation mean . Point ofrepublicans view and i remember chief Justice Rehnquist had this very strong view if it was supposed to be program in some they said, hey, wait a minute. We made an error. We will correct that error and recertified and change her numbers. Thathere is some error makes a big difference. But al gores team took the view ballot failedcard to count a certain number of votes because it was not punched clearly through. They said, see, that is an error in the vote tabulation that could determine the outcome. We should go back and reexamine those ballots. Issue was what does the phrase error in vote tabulation mean and doesnt authorize recounting all of. Hese paper ballots or not there was no grounds for continuing the recount. Host as you are describing, i am sure that people are remembering the hanging chads. Of the hanging chest. The Supreme Court said that they would hear arguments. What was the position that they . Ould get involved it was a surprise to many lawyers around the country. Andas not a surprise to me a few of my friends of the court. Weeks in earlye the peoplealking to and they said basically they are watching this very closely and there will beues very willing to jump in. I remember lawyers saying theres no way the Supreme Court would get involved. I said, that is not correct. They took the republican view bush had won this and there is no need for going through these paper ballots and when ted olson appealed it to the Supreme Court, they moved casequickly to take up the and they were going to reconsider basically the question, does the error in the vote tabulation really justify the florida Supreme Court ordering all of these recounts. Rehnquist and scalia were very. Keptical a lot of people were surprised. They jumped in. There was one technicality. This was still in Something Like the certification phase where they were tabulating the boats within florida. Everyone thought it would decide everything, and as you know, it really didnt. It was a preliminary first stage ruling that did not finally resolve the matter. Host the Supreme Court heard the oral arguments for 90 minutes. What do you remember about the actress . Both inside and outside the court. There was an enormous focus. Every decade it seems like the whole country is paying attention for at least one hour because it looked like the Court Everyone thought that there was a good chance they were going to decide the election in this case, so there was in a normas amount of focus. Its not in a normas amount of focus. Its not a great, compelling legal story. Error inhe phrase vote tabulation, and who is to decide that . Can the federal judges step in and say, wait a minute . Thats not what state election law is. And you alluded to this earlier. Even the rehnquist and scalia were states rights people, they were suggesting the federal judges, the u. S. Supreme court should step in and overrule the judges on the meaning of florida law and it seemed to a lot of people like, where did that come from . That seemed aggressive. Thats where they were. The lawyer arguing for governor bush, you mentioned him, tell our viewers about ted olson. Hes a great guy. He it come to washington with administration from Southern California and worked in the Reagan Justice department. Ill know anybody who does not like ted olson. Hes a very outgoing person, a person who knew all of the justices. Hes a very good advocate. Know, also the guy, you who played the main role in getting these cases before the Supreme Court. We may not do too well they , we mayhave mentioned need to go to the u. S. Supreme court. He kept pressing these issues. Legalal gores representation was done by laurence tribe. Who is he . Famous harvard law professor. One of the rest no and highly regarded liberal law professors of his era. He had very good arguments. The good thing was he was so smart. There were certain amount of he was a fairly liberal law professor and it was not necessarily going to have a lot of sway with the conservative and in many cases he run into a real the Supreme Court does not allow video of its proceedings. But we have a clip. Ted olson and lawrence drive, about a minute long, making their arguments. Bush versus Palm Beach County canvassing authority. Lets listen and have you talk about the arguments they made. Laurence tribe. The novemberafter president ial election the florida Supreme Court overturned and materially rewrote portions of the carefully formulated set of laws enacted by floridas legislature to govern the conduct of that election. Of who determination prevailed on november 7. Part of ourit is culture to talk about how unfair it is to change the rules of the game, i think this is the point when the game is over. When the game is over theres a photo finish, and the question is, how do you develop with greater certainty and sometimes there is a manual recount. Sometimes taking more time. What was the central part of the argument on both sides . Olson was making the argument that the florida Supreme Court has botched florida law, rather than sticking with the law on election day, they changed it. Of their view was, we were interpreting florida law, not throwing it out. Basically called for certifying the results within a is aor so, unless there computer glitch. They should certify the results. But the Supreme Court allowed instead recounting. He was making this argument. They said the Supreme Court should step in and change it. Close election. Lets make sure we count all of the votes before we decide who won the election. Three days later what does that mean . It basically just means its an opinion of the court. Basically. You may know this detail more than me, susan. But i think what happened in a day or so after that, the result was certified in florida and governor bush won. And so in a sense, the Supreme Court didnt need to resolve the issue that they thought they were going to have to resolve. And so they basically wrote an opinion for the court that that said rehnquist view of this which was the constitution from the beginning said that the electors shall be graded shall be chosen based by the manner set by the legislatures of the states. This was the view in 1787 if you were going to allow the legislators to pick the electors. Rehnquists view was that the Florida Legislature had set the law and that the florida Supreme Court had they had really no basis for changing that law. Normally state courts determine their own state law but rehnquist kept saying federal elections are different. He laid that out in a few paragraphs, a few pages. Were a little bit unclear what the basis of the so they found a way to write an opinion, make the case go away because at that time, they realized they didnt need to resolve it because the certification had ended and governor bush at that point had won. Except it didnt end it. And events move very quickly over the next couple of days. So much so that i asked our producer to put it on a timeline. So we can go through it quickly. In december, they announce theyd would convene for the process of choosing new electors. On december 7th, the gore legal team makes arguments in the florida Supreme Court. A lot happened on december 8th of that year. The florida Supreme Court ordered manual recounts in a 43 decision. At the same time the bush team seeks a recount injunction from the Supreme Court. And then the Florida Legislature starts its meeting process to choose new look or thes. One day later, december 9th, the Supreme Court stepped in to halt the manual recounts anisette a date for a hearing. Two days later, the arguments were heard in bush v. Gore and one day later, the Supreme Court announced the decision whichened in a 54 decision. First of all, why was speed of such essence . Why did events have to move so quickly . Well, two things. After the case back in florida, there is a provision of florida law that says after the results been certified, the losing candidate can contest the result. Thats why gore was back before the florida Supreme Court saying were contesting the results. There are thousands of these punch card ballot, some of them didnt register votes. They should be counting. So he was contesting that. The time issue was there is a provision in the federal law that says theres sort of a period where if a state gets its electors and decided and i believe its december 12th, then theyre subject to it in further challenge when they go to congress. Theres a lot of debate about this. But basically the view was december 12th was the day the state needed to resolve this. So there was, as you say, sort of a realtime pressure. The florida Supreme Court on that friday handed down this 43 decision. I think they said, theres Something Like 40,000 of these ballots that are punch card ballots that went through the machine, didnt register a vote. They should all be counted. And i think their view was they could be counted friday, saturday, sunday, and monday. And the count would be completed by the the date early next week. I think it was always the case on the bush team side was they were very worried that if the count proceeded that gore could go ahead and then that would change everything. If gore were suddenly ahead in the vote, you know, then then theyre in bad shape because they have to keep saying, wait a minute, keep counting. So they did not want that count to continue. And that was part of their driving force. When the florida Supreme Court decided that on a friday, ted olson was ready on friday night to appeal, file an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court, u. S. Supreme court and say stop issue an order, stop the count. Is it a simple majority opinion . Yes, it takes five votes to issue an order that within the court within the grant review of the case. If an injunction is in order to stop doing what youre doing and joining the action, it takes five. Do you recall the vote on the injunction . Was that a 54 vote . 00 28 19 it sure was. And it was in my view it was the decision it decided the matter. The split was career. And once they decided it was over with, i i covered like the rest of the world what went on sunday, monday, and tuesday. But in my view, it was over about noon on when they handed down the injunction. It was rehnquist, scalia, thomas and kennedy and oconnor. We know that before john stephens, justice ginsburg, suitor the and briar issued a decent. And they knew they were astonished that on that friday night that ted olson that it was actually a possibility that the court would intervene to stop the count. I remember years later, they talked about being in plays at holiday parties and being astonished to know that the court was going to meet and that they could possibly defy the five on the right would jump quickly to shut down the counting. The. The five on the right would jump quickly to shut down the counting in florida but that is what happened. On saturday afternoon. All across florida there were teams going on punch card ballots. The Supreme Court on a 54 ballot said stop the counting. And we will agree to hear the case on a fasttrack. Everybody understood it had to be done by december 12. This was saturday afternoon. Tuesday the time would run out. When the Supreme Court stepped in and stopped the vote, you would only do that if you had your mind made up. Five of them have their mind made up, they were not going to allow the recount to continue. Two underscore, the 54 injunction vote presaged for you what was ultimately going to happen with the bush v gore in the oral argument. Yes, i remember that afternoon, some news accounts said this was a temporary measure, a temperate order to keep things on hold until tuesday. I said yes that is one way to put it. But the truth is, this is the end. This is the main decision. You would not stop the vote counting for the full weekend, until early next week, unless you had decided, the vote count was going to end. Sunday and monday on it was only a question of the courts conservatives had to think of a reason for deciding what they had already decided. That is, they knew the decision that this manual recount would come to an end. It has been a month. We should call this off and ended. Scalia later talked about, this is a national embarrassment. An embarrassment to the nation that we have not resolved the presidency. They were very frustrated that the count had continued. They had made their decision. They then heard some arguments monday and tuesday but really, to try to come up with a legal sounding reason for explain why the count should and. But by saturday afternoon the decision had been made. Still interesting to listen to the case and some questions even though as you say their minds were already made up. On december 11, when the kids happen, were you in the courtroom . What you are member about the atmosphere that day . Yes. David boyce was arguing for gore. His a very good advocate, a terrific trial lawyer before juries. But he had made no headway with the justices. I am sorry if im repeating myself. I really thought they had in their minds made up their minds. Justice kennedy and Justice Oconnor were fishing around for a reason, and kennedy had lash onto the idea in his mind that was it was some sort of equal protection violation. Because in theory, what if you have a situation where poppys county is saying, we are going to count every vote where there is an indented punch on the ballot as long as we can see where if there is a punch next to bushs name . And then the next county has a very strict standard, that says, you are not going to count it unless it has been pushed all the way through . And so kennedys view is, it would violate the equal protection clause in the constitution, to have these different counting standards in different localities. Nobody i dont think really made the argument, that they had set this up to discriminate against george bush, that they were going to be easy for al gore or hard for george bush, it was because there was no agreedupon uniform standard, that it could differ county by county. And kennedy tried out the view and said you know, he was fishing around, or trying to get clear in his own mind, what was a good reason for saying, this recount could end. That is what i remember, them good sort of going back and forth on this. And ted olson had a much easier time of basically saying, again, that governor bush had won, the florida Supreme Court is sort of making fools of all of us by continuing this endless recount procedure trying to find votes and these punch cards it is time for this to end. We are going to listen to clips from, the oral arguments that day. I want to do a media note. This case was the first time the chief justice granted sameday release of an oral argument before the Supreme Court petition that have been made to the court by cspan and followed by others in the media. As soon as the hearing was over, the audio was released so the country out of the world could hear what was happened what had happened that day. A practice the court has continued throughout, since that day in 2000. Lets listen first to david boyce and the argument he made on bush v gore december 11, 2000. [video clip] the florida Supreme Court has held where a voters intent can be discerned even if they do not do what they are told, that is supposed to be counted. The. Why with a gore legal team make a change in the attorneys arguing the case . I do not know for sure, but i think having listened to both arguments, that larry was given a tough time in the first round of arguments. You could tell he was not making a lot of headway with the courts conservatives and boyce had done the argument in the Supreme Court and had done very well and sort of one so i assume that people, al gore and the people around him said well, boyce had done so well arguing this case and the florida Supreme Court, why not have him carry on and make the argument in the u. S. Supreme court. Lets listen to ted olson. [video clip] with respect to punchcard ballots, there are different standards for evaluating those ballots from county to county. And it is a documented history, in this case, that there have been different standards between november 7 at the present three respect to how those punchcard pallets are evaluated. Palm springs is the best example. They started with a clear role, which had been articulated and explained to voters, as of 1990. Then they got into the process of evaluating these ballots and changed the standard from moment to moment during the first day and they evolved from the standard that the chad had to be punched through to this socalled doubled ballot standard, indentations on the ballot. There was an indentation there was a reason why this was done. There is pressure on to change the standards. With arguments he made this time around essentially the same he made in Palm Beach County case. Yes. Those are good clips of that competing views. Boies was correct to say that the florida law said the intent of the voter. If you had a punch and it was unclear whether a whole had been punched through and some of wrote and with a crown, bush, you can look at that ballot and say, it was clear this voter intended to vote for governor bush, so we should rely on the intent of the voter, is not something you, it has been florida law and it is reasonable to take each ballot and say this is a legal vote if we can discern what this voter wanted to do. That was the sort of liberal, prorecount argument. Ted olson was making the what turned out to be the very good winning argument, which was, look, there are counties all across florida. They do not have an agreedupon standard. It is going to differ county to county. It may even differ he said in this example where they are trying to change the standard he said, he suggested in hopes of finding more votes. And it seems like something unfair about that if youre going to sort of manipulate the standard to try to, in effect, manufacture more votes. So i think both of them did a good job sort of laying out the argument that they want to the court to accept. To give our viewers a sense of what it was like on the bench, lets listen to Justice Scalia questioning david boies. [video clip] the florida Supreme Court said there shall be added to the certification these additional. That is true in any contest. Every contest. It is not added to the certification. You made to a review of ballots and at more numbers. As i read the florida Supreme Court opinion it says the secretary of state will certify these additional. Yes because a procedure to contest the certification. What you are doing is saying the certification is wrong, change it. And what the florida Supreme Court was saying after this trial, is yes, you prove, that this certification is missing. A certification rendered by the secretary of state did not include those additional ballots for your client. And the Supreme Court directed that the certification would be changed to include those. But your honor, that is what happens every time there is a successful contest. The contest is a contest published certification. You have that does not make any certification, you have a certification may by the secretary of state, that is what is contested. To get people a flavor of the other side lets listen to Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg questioning ted olson. [video clip] mr. Olson, he said the intent of the vote will not do it is too vague or subjective. But at least, at least, both the intent of the voter, the legislature. What if anything added to that be, wouldnt you be objecting much more fiercely than you are now, if something were added to the words that the allpowerful legislature put in the statute . I think we have to distinguish whether we are talking about a perspective, uniform standard, as opposed to something that changes the process in the middle of the counting and evaluating of disputes. But if you are talking about if we are caught talking about the contest, the statute as Justice Souter pointed out speaks with amazing breadth. It says the circuit judge, this is the text, shall fashion any order he or she deems necessary, to prevent or correct any wrong, and to provide any relief, appropriate to the circumstances. I cannot imagine a Greater Authority by the legislature to the certifiers. What can we take away from both of those exchanges . Well, that exchange with ruth ginsburg, she was a very smart lawyer. And always, always smart and very well prepared. And she is drying back to ted olson the argument he is making. She is saying, you are arguing that the Florida Courts were changing florida law. And she says float a law says, the intent of the voter is he says florida law says the intent of the voter is what counts. Florida law has a liberal provision for going back and contesting results. And all the Florida Courts were doing is abiding by that. Why isnt that, why arent you asking us to change florida law which you say you do not want us to do . I thought it was a very good counter to the arguments that he was making. Justice scalia, there was these two parts of the florida law. First the certification and then the contesting the results afterwards. I am not sure, i guess there was some part of the florida Supreme Court opinion that said, these extra ballots have been certified, and add those to the total. And Justice Scalia had a lot of doubts, was skeptical of this procedure and just adding votes to the certification, which was in his you another example of what is going wrong in the Florida Court. The court issued its opinion at 10 00 p. M. The following day, december 12. We have a headline of your december 13 story on the outcome of that case. There were two rulings in the case with different sets of votes. Maybe you can help us understand the significance. First the 72 per curiam. He told us before the per curiam is the opinion of the court this was split. And then there was the final 54 decision. What should we know about those two decisions . Well, so, i presume date, after the argument, met in a conference, and cast their votes, and there were five votes to end the recount, on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. Either that it violated equal protection, which was kennedys view, or that requestscully of you, that the Florida Court had wrongly changed state law after the election which violates federal law. Because the constitution says the legislature it sets the way of choosing the electric. Dusty electorate. On the liberal side, both Justice Souter and Justice Breyer made clear during the argument, they were looking for some sort of middle position. And they were willing to say, and willing to go along with kennedys view, ok, if your problem is that we have, that the Florida Courts have not set a very precise, clear standard that says, you have to punch a card all the way through, have a whole for it to count, Say Something more specific about what is a legal vote, they were willing to go along with an opinion that would say, ok, send this back to florida. With the requirement that they would set a more specific standard, and then finish the count. But it turned out that kennedy and oconnor were not in favor of sending it back and finishing the count. They were interested in ending the count. And shutting it down. And so, i was viewed that really as a 54 opinion. There was a 54 split saturday. It went back and considered it tuesday. They ended up with a pro curium where it is an unsigned opinion, an opinion for the court, and then 4 dissents, stevens, ginsburg, breyer and souter each wrote dissents. Souter said we never should have taken this case. We never should have intervened. We should not have shut down the count. Now we have wrongly ended the case. Justice breyer said the same thing. I was going to go along with something that would allow recount to continue. But there is no justification for ending this and shutting it down. So as i said, it was in my opinion, it was basically a 54 split on saturday. And it 54 split tuesday night. The majority not speaking, everybody understands Justice Kennedy drafted most of that. It made his equal protection argument that you cannot have a recount statewide with all of these counting teams and no clear standard as to what counts as a specific agreement on what counts as a valid vote, and therefore it is unconstitutional, and time is up on december 12, therefore it is over. And al gore came to that conclusion as well . Lets listen to a statement december 13, 2000. Let there be no doubt that while i strongly disagree with the courts decision, i accepted. I accept it. I accept the finale of this outcome which will be ratified monday in the Electoral College. Tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy i offer my concession. This is america. Just as we fight hard when the stakes are high, we close ranks and come together when the contest is done. And while there will be time enough to debate our continuing differences, now is the time to recognize that that which unites us is greater than that which divides us. While we yet hold and do not yield our opposing beliefs, there is a higher duty than the one we out to the political party. This is america and we put country before party. We will stand together behind already present. David savage, in my reading about this case, i took away the understanding that the court meant this to be a single or decision. A circumstance at the time. But in fact has it created precedent and has bush v gore been cited in ensuing election cases with frequency . Well, i think you are correct on your first thought. The court and they said this in the opinion, this is basically we are deciding this issue but kennedy did not want to say that there is this equal protection standard applies to all elections because everybody in every case could make that argument. Jesse jackson used to always say, the vote systems in the africanamerican precincts are not as good as in the majority white. They miss more about. Therefore it they miss more votes. The court did not want to entertain those claims. Therefore they basically said we are deciding this case and it is not a precedent that should be excited widely. However that should be cited widely. However it is true in recent years lawyers and cases have increasingly cited was to be gore under the proposition, actually both propositions, that sometimes they say hey, the legislature in this state and the courts in the state are not following the rules set by the legislature. This test, during this pandemic. Suppose the state law says, ballots have to be, you can mill your ballot in but it has to be in on election day, and some judges, some courts, some state courts have said, well, because of that male problems and because mail problems and the rush of late mail ballots, particularly because of the primary in the spring, the may arrive late but as long as theyre postmarked on election day, they will count. People on the other site said you are changing the law set by the legislature, see bush versus gore you cannot do that. There are also sometimes there has been an argument that something is different in one county or another. Or a particular county. Supposed the particular state has a particular role and some smaller counties do something else. Some republican lawyers have said you cannot do that, that is an unequal rule for about counting and therefore it violates bush versus gore. So it is true that bush versus gore has shown up in recent months and a lot of the argument and a lot of discussion. Brett kavanaugh quoted it recently in one decision. But it has not been, the Supreme Court has not cited it as the basis for a ruling. So it has not been a precedent the Supreme Court relies on for its decisions. Two days after the 2020 election we have two candidates in close races and none has achieved as of the time we are taking the requisite 270 electoral votes. On Election Night the sitting president announce at 2 00 in the morning he would ask the lets listen to what he had to say. President trump this is a fraud on the american public, this is embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election, frankly, we did win this election. [cheers and applause] President Trump so our goal now is to ensure the integrity for the good of this nation. This is a very big moment, this is a major fraud on our nation, we want the law to be used in a proper manner so we will be going to the u. S. Supreme court, we want all voting to stop. We do not want them to find any ballots at 4 00 in the morning and add them to the list. Ok . [cheers and applause] President Trump it is a very sad, it is a very sad moment, to me this is a very sad moment, and we will win this and as far as i am concerned we already have won it. You have just filed a story about the comparisons between bush v. Gore in 2000, and you quoted david strauss, university of chicago law professor, saying President Trump did not help his cause by suggesting the Supreme Court was ready to ride to his rescue. The justices are all aware that bush v. Gore ruling did damage to the courts legitimacy. Can you explain what that means . I think they all know the court has a certain legitimacy and respect that as the arbiters of the constitution. They care very much about preserving the reputation of the court. A lot of them will say one thing they most think about throughout their career, is that they do not want to do anything that would damage the court. They want to leave the court in as good a place as it was when they arrived. And they know that partisan election cases are some of the most treacherous territory. Because youre almost sure to irritate 50 of the people who think you are partisan and wrong. And they know that the bush versus gore opinion was controversial and much disputed. Justice scalia would say get over it, but they all knew it was very controversial, and they did not want to be in the position of seeming, being seen as partisan actors. And so they are not anxious to go into that again. And President Trump is very willing to invoke the Supreme Court and say, im going to the Supreme Court. It is unclear to me when he said that what he meant by that. He said something about stop the voting. Voting was already over. And they were counting ballots in the state. The Supreme Court is not going to jump in and say stop counting the mailin ballots. And trumps lawyers did not ask the court for Something Like that. So it was a peculiar invocation of saying, im going to the Supreme Court. Who knows what will happen, weeks from now . But i do not think the Supreme Court is anxious and ready to jump in at the first opportunity and decide some aspect of this election. So your instincts, in the 2000, of december back in even though people were saying the court would ultimately get involved. You say the court is hesitant to get involved, is that correct . Yes, i think it is unlikely they will get involved. It is possible. Some issue might arise that would cause you know, the state courts would decide, and the Supreme Court would get a petition from trumps lawyers and say, this is clearly not state law and it is clearly unfair. At theont see that moment. I have tried to watch the there is aand pending case that has come up from pennsylvania, but it only involves the ballots that arrived after november 3. In pennsylvania, they have been counting some extraordinary number, one million plus ballots, but those were already in. The issue that the trump team is raising really involves a small number of ballots that are not even part of the current count. If pennsylvania would come down say, if biden ended up prevailing by 5000 votes and it included those late ballots, then yes. I would see the Trump Campaign would be able to go back to the Supreme Court and stacy . Say, see . These late arriving ballots should not have been counted because the state legislature did not want them to be counted, you should intervene. Its possible. But i think it is very much of a long shot, because the result will be settled and those ballots are not going to affect the outcome, so therefore, there is no reason for the Supreme Court to get involved. Minutee have about a left. With the benefit of 20 years h indsight, how should we look back at the case of bush v. G ore in 2000 . There were five members of the court, five republicans who took the view of the bush team, which was gee, all the votes have been counted in governor bush has won. I said in this story, that is the position President Trump is in now, that al gore was in. To say once you have lost, once the votes have been counted and you have lost, it is very hard to go to court and persuade a court that, to essentially step in, jump in, change the rules and overturn the result. It turns out that the Supreme Court was not willing to allow that to continue in 2000, and it would be interesting to see if it happens again. What i think it is the kind of important,hat was obviously a decisive case at that time, but i dont think the court is anxious to quickly repeat that experience. David savage, few people in our country have more experience with observing the Supreme Court than you, from your perch at the los angeles times, doing this job since 1986. Thank you so much for sharing your memories and your analysis ago. Sh v gore 20 years it was great to go through it, susan. Thank you very much. All q a programs are available on our website or as a podcast at cspan. Org. Any of thisssed weeks q a with los angeles time Supreme Court reporter david savage on the 2000 bush versus gore Supreme Court case, you can watch it this sunday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan. President trump has released a statement, saying in part the simple fact is, this election is far from over. Joe biden has not been certified as the winner of any states, let alone any winner of the highly contested states headed for mandatory recounts or states where our campaign has ballot and valid and legitimate legal challenges that could determine the ultimate victor. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer released a statement on the president ial election results, congratulating joe biden and kamala harris. It concludes by saying joe biden has won this election fair and square, and Republican Leaders must unequivocally contend the current president s and work to ensure the peaceful transfer of power on january 20. January 20. President trump returned today from his golf club in virginia after the president ial election had been called. Here is a look at his motorcade on its final stretch in washington, d. C. Before entering. He white house grounds area honking] ringing] this morning, just after the president ial race was called for joe biden, President Trumps attorney, rudy giuliani, held a News Conference on allegations of voter fraud, focusing on the state of pennsylvania